


Deliver us unto each other

by Canon_Is_Relative



Category: The Queen's Thief - Megan Whalen Turner
Genre: "gen" meaning the fic category not the character, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, F/M, Gen or Pre-Slash, Loyalty, Multi, Nightmares, Post-King of Attolia, Relationship Negotiation, Sharing a Bed, Trust, intimate gen, though that's there too :)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-14
Updated: 2016-06-14
Packaged: 2018-07-14 11:13:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7168700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Canon_Is_Relative/pseuds/Canon_Is_Relative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Costis was no stranger to the king’s nightmares, nor to the king’s habit of sending for him at all hours and on all pretenses.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Deliver us unto each other

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jain/gifts).



Costis opened his eyes.

 

To his left, curtains had been drawn across the windows, leaving only cracks and crannies for the bold morning light to sneak through. And to his right, there was nothing shy about the way the first glance of sunrise rested upon the slack, unguarded features of the king. Closing his eyes again, praying that it would be a dream and afraid that it was, Costis tried to understand how he’d come to be here.  


The king had been having a nightmare. That was the beginning.  


 

*

 

 

Costis was no stranger to the king’s nightmares, nor to the king’s habit of sending for him at all hours and on all pretenses. If Costis was on duty and the king wanted the opinion of a soldier or a farmer, or if he was restless, or if he was simply bored, he sent for Costis. Though no longer lieutenant-at-large assigned to His Majesty, Costis had not been entirely surprised by the way dancing attendance on the king still commanded a great many hours of his day. In the months since the king had halved the Guard, Costis found himself a frequent guest of the royal apartments, and had, almost, grown used to the sight of the queen in her nightshirt.

Costis was on duty in the queen’s guardroom, trying to keep awake by attending to the conversation of the men around him and largely failing. He was nearly asleep on his feet when Phresine opened the door and called to him, beckoning for him to follow. It was a mark of how far they’d all come, Costis thought, that to a man the guards stood respectfully while he unbuckled his sword belt and handed over his pistol, and not a comment nor an eyeroll followed him from the guardroom when he hurried after Phresine.

 

With the door shut behind them, Phresine’s placid expression fell away and she gripped Costis’s sleeve. “The king is raving in his sleep and won’t wake.”

 

Costis pressed his lips together and nodded, and set off through the maze of corridors and anterooms. As he drew closer, Costis heard a shout, a moan, and then the king’s cries grew louder and shriller. Costis recognized that primal note in his voice, though he hadn’t heard it since the last time the king had been dosed with lethium. Costis broke into a run. When he reached the door that led directly to the queen’s bedroom, the attendants gathered there drew back and one of the king’s men opened the door for Costis.

 

“Costis,” Attolia was at his side in an instant, her nightshirt pale and her face paler. “Help me. He won’t wake.”

 

“I’ll try, My Queen,” he bowed his head to her, already moving toward the slight figure writhing on the bed.

 

Even in sleep the former thief was slippery as an eel and Costis ended up kneeling on the bed, trying at once to hold the king still to keep him from injuring himself while heaving him upright to shake him and shout into his ear.

 

Costis had once watched his uncle pull a man from the Gede river, a farmhand who couldn’t swim. The king behaved like that man, now, arching his back and rolling his eyes, hacking out coughs that tried to wring the lungs from his body. At last he lay there, gasping like he’d never thought to taste fresh air again, and with his hands clawed into Costis’s leather tunic he muttered, “Pol?”

 

“It’s me, it’s Costis, My King,” Costis said softly, laying the king back down onto his sweat-drenched pillow. The king’s hair was in his eyes, he couldn’t see that Costis wasn’t this Pol he was asking for, so Costis gently brushed it away. Then he rested the backs of his fingers against the king’s temple.

 

“You were dreaming,” said the queen’s level voice over Costis’s shoulder.

 

“I was _drowning_ ,” the king answered, closing his eyes.

 

The queen approached, reaching for the king’s left hand. “Sophos, again?”

 

“Yes,” he sighed, then laughed wearily. “I dreamed that my queen sent me to steal him from a cave hidden beneath a river and protected by the gods.”

 

A pause. “I hear that your queen would be happy to have him safely recovered.”

 

Eugenides cracked open one eye and cocked his head. “Would you?”

 

“Am I your queen?”

 

“In my dreams and in my waking hours, you are.” Eugenides had raised his hand to lay his palm against Attolia’s cheek, his thumb tracing over her bottom lip. “But, my dear, you forget we have a guest. I’m afraid you are embarrassing poor Costis.” The king turned to look at Costis, whose face indeed felt warm, and offered him a wide smirk.

 

“My King, My Queen, Your Majesties, I, I’ll just.” Costis stammered, backing towards the door.  


“Stay, Costis,” the queen said. “Stay, and keep us company. My lord is recently prone to wandering.”

 

“I don’t _wander_ ,” the king said, with the air of a child standing beside an empty sugar bowl.

 

“You wander.”

 

“And you think to mend my wandering ways by throwing Costis in front of me?”

 

“Would you mend so easily?”

 

The king and queen looked at each other, and although he looked away quickly Costis thought he saw in their faces a certain measure of understanding so familiar that it jarred with the questioning words they spoke.

 

“Oh, very well. Costis can stay.”

 

“I’m not sure what I could do,” Costis finally cleared his throat and spoke. Then he looked at the king. “I know what your cousin Aulus would suggest, but I fear My Queen would object."

 

“I am intrigued,” the queen said, seating herself elegantly upon the far side of the bed.

 

The king’s eyes narrowed. “You would be. You two have more in common than you realize. You both want nothing more than to see me pinned down like,” he turned to Costis. “How did Aulus put it?”

 

“Trapped like a kitten in a sack,” Costis recited blandly, fighting to keep the smile off his face.

 

The king scoffed, and looked again at the queen. “Am I your kitten?”

 

“Never doubt it, my lord.”

 

“Humph. Well then, I am a kitten and here is my sack.” The king plucked at the bedclothes that were still twisted around him, an eloquent reminder of the nightmare he’d just endured. Costis had almost forgotten the reason he stood before his night-clothed majesties in the first place, and he knew better by now than to suppose the king’s misdirection had been accidental. “Costis, will you be our guard dog and keep us safe from wanderlust and other terrors of the night?”

 

“I,” Costis said, and shut his mouth. He didn’t know what to say, but decided he was done gaping like fish. He nodded.

 

 

*

 

 

Actually settling himself onto the bed was an entirely awkward affair. His knee bumped the king’s and he choked out an apology as he nearly fell off the bed in his haste to put distance between his own clumsy limbs and the king’s royal ones. How was a person supposed to comport himself when his duty as a guardsman led him into his king’s bed?

 

He felt his face flush, imagining the way Aristogiton would crow with mirth if he knew, the way he’d elbow Costis with a wink and tell him, _When we teased you for getting into bed with the king we didn’t think you’d take us literally._ The laughter in his ears did not fade as he forced the thought away. The king was chuckling to himself. No, not to himself — he was sharing the joke with his wife.  


Eugenides’s _wife._ Costis’s _queen._ Costis’s palms began to sweat.  


“Go to sleep, Costis.”

 

Beside Costis, the king sighed and burrowed into his nest of pillows and blankets, and on the king’s other side, Costis heard the queen also sigh and stretch. The sound of bare feet beneath silk sheets was unmistakable and alarming. Costis stretched out his own legs atop the covers, true to his stated purpose of holding the king trapped beneath them, and then forgot his awkwardness in a flash of strange recognition.

 

Back home on his uncle’s farm they raised, among other things, the fine, fat geese whose feathers where sold for heavy gold in the capital marketplaces as stuffing for pillows and mattresses. So while this bed was a good deal larger than any he’d ever occupied himself and certainly more comfortable than his cot in the barracks, it didn’t feel like unaccountable luxury. It felt like home.

 

Costis propped himself against the headboard and crossed his arms like a soldier waiting out the night in the strangest trench imaginable and with no intention of falling asleep.

 

 

*

 

 

He woke an indeterminate amount of time later. His neck ached, and the king was staring at him.

 

Not that he noticed the king right away. He’d opened his eyes already looking at the queen, His Queen, her porcelain-fine skin webbed with shadow, her lashes fluttering against her cheeks. She seemed deep in sleep, perhaps lost to some dream that, if not pleasant, was at least causing her no distress.

 

“She’s nice like this,” came the king’s soft voice from near Costis’s hip. “Isn’t she?”

 

_Nice?_

She was his queen. She was the embodiment of everything Costis stood for, had fought for, would die for. She was his country, his home, Attolia in name and in deed. To see her like this, in repose, vulnerable…was terrifying. She was terrifying. And she was as astonishingly lovely.

 

Costis nodded, and he saw the king smile. “Do you know, Costis, that until I was married I never shared a bed with anyone? Now, don’t blush.”  


The king went on talking, rambling tales of his misspent youth, at least half of which Costis would not have believed even a few short months ago. It was not until Costis felt himself drifting back into sleep, in the space where thoughts seemed to move with the speed of lightning in a summer sky to illuminate truths that would have otherwise remained hidden in ignorant darkness, that Costis realized what Eugenides was saying. The king had been _afraid_ , all his life, to fall asleep. To lie down to sleep means surrendering all control, for beggars and kings alike. For this king, when he was a child it meant he couldn’t protect himself from the tricks of his cousins or other children who hated him.

 

Costis’s eyes leapt away from the king’s face of their own accord. He knew the Thief had been sleeping when they sprung the trap for him, here in this very palace, many floors below where they now lay awake in this enormous, opulent bed. The king lay like a child, on his side with his knees drawn up, his hands tucked beneath the pillow. His hand.

 

(In all the time the king had spent talking to Costis, pestering him and mocking him and wheedling him, he’d never once asked where he was on that night. Costis was grateful for this omission, though it had the perverse effect of making Costis want to tell him.)

 

“Costis, I’m going to tell you something and I expect you to appreciate the fact that I’ve managed to keep it between my teeth all these years. It’s not the kind of gossip that anyone is interested in anymore so don’t get your hopes up, you’ll have to go on making your living the honest, boring way.”

 

The king waited patiently while Costis delivered the indignant defense of his honor and character that the king expected of him, and then continued.

 

“When I was young, after my mother died, I would sometimes sneak into the bedchamber of Helen, my cousin who is Eddis. She wasn't Eddis, then, but had just become heir, and so wherever she was felt like the safest place in the world. During the day I hated it, it was maddening the way she was fettered by her new responsibilities as heir to the throne, she was the only one of my cousins that I liked! But at night I would sometimes creep in and sleep on the floor at the foot of her bed like a dog.”

 

“Was it the ‘safest place in the world’ because she was so carefully guarded?”

 

“Yes.”

 

“But _you_ got in.”

 

The king’s teeth flashed in the dark. “Yes. Only once did anyone see me, and they assumed the obvious: that I was concerned for her safety and kept my own watch. I love my cousin who is Eddis, then and now, but I have _never_ been that selfless. I let the assumption stand anyway, of course. It was good for both of us.”

 

Costis wanted to ask what it had been like. Not sleeping on the floor—sharing a bed for the first time. Sharing it with the woman who’d stood over him as his right hand was separated from the rest of his body.

 

Costis wanted to know what that kind of love felt like. He imagined suddenly, in bright detail, waking in the night to find Eugenides sleeping at the foot of his cot in the soldier’s barracks. He thought of the lengths he’d go to keep this man safe, and, daring thought, _happy_ , and asked himself if perhaps he already knew.

 

“Costis,” Eugenides said, and sighed when Costis didn’t look at him. He couldn’t. Instead, he found himself gazing again at the queen. “You know you would not be here if it was not her will.”

 

“You are king.”

 

“I am.” Costis could see his smile without looking at him. “But I am also her husband, as well as something else that’s nearly as rare: her friend.”

 

Costis’s heart gave a painful kick. There was always talk of this baron or that patron being _A friend to the queen_ , but he knew that was not what Eugenides meant.

 

“Irene has never had a friend before. Or rather, she has never allowed herself to trust her friends.”

 

“Relius?” Costis asked, remembering the day the she arrested her master of spies. When he knelt before her and swore that he’d never meant to betray her. _You must believe me_ , he’d begged. She’d said, _Must I?_ and he had answered, _No._

 

Eugenides nodded. “It seems to me that if you cannot trust those whom you love, then loving at all begins to seem a dangerous, and then a pointless, endeavor.”

 

Costis remembered what Eugenides himself had said, all those months ago. That loving the Queen of Attolia was a ridiculous pursuit. _Like falling in love with a landslide._ And he thought about what Aris had said, many times over. That he would march into the mouth of hell for her, but any man who wanted to marry her should be considered out of his senses.

 

Costis wondered if there was perhaps a special place in the afterlife reserved for men like him — like them, for now he was meeting Eugenides’s gaze with his own eyes wide open — men who spent their living days chasing down misery with open arms and perfect conviction.

 

“Does she trust you now, your majesty?” Costis’s voice was barely a whisper.

 

“She does. And I trust you, Costis.”

 

Costis blinked. One of the queen’s hands rested on Eugenides’ chest, rising and falling with his breaths. Costis wondered whether he would be able to feel the king’s heartbeat, were he bold enough he reach out and cover her hand with his own.

 

“Lie down, Costis,” Eugenides finally said, wriggling himself into a more comfortable position. “You’re giving me a neck ache just looking at you.”

 

Eugenides smoothed the queen’s hair away from her face and brushed his lips across her closed eyelids. When Costis had settled onto his back beside the king, Eugenides turned to him and kissed his forehead.

 

 

*

  


Costis opened his eyes. Morning light crept into the room through the windows to his left, and to his right, Eugenides lay with his cheek against Costis’s chest and his neck supported by Costis’s arm which had, sometime in the night, become wrapped around the king’s shoulders.

 

Hoping and fearing that it was only a dream, he didn’t move again until a stir of fabric and breath across the room captured his attention. He opened his eyes and turned to look at his queen.

 

“My Queen,” he murmured.

 

She inclined her head. “Good morning, Costis.”

 

The king stirred and sighed, and the queen shifted her attention to her husband. Costis watched the queen. She was sitting by the window with her hands in her lap. Her hair, usually so neatly arranged even as she slept, had come free of its bindings, perhaps when she struggled alone to wake Eugenides, and now it hung loose and tangled around her shoulders. Her lips, unpainted, curved slightly as Eugenides made a soft sound in his sleep.

 

“You can move,” she said, herself unmoving. “Don’t make yourself uncomfortable on his account.”

 

“He’s not heavy.”

 

“He can be.”

 

Costis remembered the weight of the king in his arms, that afternoon in the garden, and quietly conceded the point. He watched him for a few minutes more, wondering when he would stop feeling surprised by how young Eugenides looked when he was not aware of being watched. Then he smiled, and said quietly, “He’s nice like this.”

 

Attolia lifted an eyebrow, but after a moment a quick smile visited her face. “Yes. He is.”

 

“He’s not really sleeping, is he?” Costis asked. He’d seen the man feign sleep before, too often to trust the seeming peace of his deep breaths and sprawling limbs.

 

The queen paused before answering. “He is, for now. You’ll learn to tell the difference.”

 

Costis thought that if he had a hundred nights to study Eugenides, he still would not be able to tell anything about him with confidence. A thought occurred to him and he looked quickly back at the queen. She was still wearing her nightshirt with a shawl around her shoulders, and Costis was consumed with guilt that she might have left the bed because he was in it.

 

Something of his distress must have shown on his face, for the queen resettled in her chair and looked serenely at him. “Did you sleep well, Costis?”

 

“I did, Your Majesty, thank you,” Costis replied automatically.

 

“I have been an early riser all my life. Even so, it is rare for me to wake before my husband. It is a rare gift for me to see him so at peace.” She lifted a hand to indicate the way he rested against Costis. “He trusts you.”

 

“He told me so, last night.”

 

“Did he?” Costis thought it was surprise that arched her brow.

 

Costis nodded humbly.

 

“How old are you, Costis?” She asked suddenly. He told her, and she laughed sadly. “You have seen more of this life than either of us, then.”

 

“Only by the count of years, My Queen.”

 

“You know another way to measure a life?”

 

Maybe by the weight of burdens carried, or by tragedies endured, but he didn’t know how to say any of that to her.

 

Sunrise shifted hues from unassuming pink to strident gold, and Costis couldn’t have said which was the more surreal; his riddling midnight conversation with the king — with Eugenides — or this plain exchange of words with she who was now and forever His Queen but who was also becoming, in some soft way he would never be able to explain, a woman named Irene.

 

He couldn’t quite grasp the shift in the space Eugenides occupied, either. It used to be that Costis called him, or thought of him, as _Eugenides_ simply because he couldn’t always call him The King or His Majesty or he would go mad. Eugenides had not always been a name Costis called him with respect.

 

As though sensing the dark turn of his thoughts, Eugenides shifted in his arms. “You’re talking about me,” he grumbled, not opening his eyes.

 

“Of course. We wouldn’t want to disappoint you,” the queen replied.

 

“Costis makes a much better pillow than you do, Irene.”

 

“I imagine that Costis puts up with your elbows in his ribs because you are his King and hold the power of life and death over him. Even in bed.”

 

Eugenides had opened his eyes and sat up, but made no move to leave the bed. Costis, pushing himself up slowly, looked between them and saw the understanding glance that passed over his head between husband and wife.

 

“Costis,” Eugenides said, and the accent that Costis — that no one — ever noticed fell away from his voice. “In this room, in this bed, let me be only Eugenides. Do you understand?”

 

“No, My King, I don’t,” Costis whispered, looking down at his hands. At where the stump of the king’s right arm rested above the covers. If he’d had a hand, if he’d stretched out his fingers, if Costis had uncurled his, they would be palm to palm.

 

Eugenides reached out his hand and cupped Costis’s chin, lifting his face and meeting his eyes. He was gentle, and he spoke without jest. “Do you trust me?” Eugenides asked. A strange question for a monarch to ask of his subject, Costis thought, but he nodded.

 

“With my life, My King.”

 

“Eugenides,” the queen corrected him, sounding almost gentle.

 

“With my very life, Eugenides.”

 

Eugenides, Costis discovered, was radiant when he smiled, and Costis had to lower his eyes. A moment later he felt the king’s hand against the back of his head, drawing him down to lay a deliberate kiss against each of his closed eyelids. Costis trembled, and didn’t move until Eugenides spoke again.

 

“I suppose it would make your head explode if I asked you to call your Queen _Irene_ , so I won’t. Not yet, anyway.”

 

Costis was aware of how hot his face had gone only when a soft, cool hand pressed against his cheek. He jerked his head up in surprise and very nearly clipped the queen’s chin. She smiled, the corners of her mouth tucking down in amusement, and Costis slid from the bed to kneel before her and kiss her hand. “My Queen.”

 

She cupped his face in both hands as she bent over him and said softly, “My Costis.”

 

Behind them, the king’s stomach gave a huge growl. “My breakfast,” Eugenides said sadly, “is probably getting cold.”

 

“You’ve survived worse,” Irene said mildly, drawing Costis up to stand beside her.

 

The two of them looked down on Eugenides, pouting and rumpled in the bed they’d shared, and his frown deepened. “You’re _laughing_ at me,” he accused, and Costis shook his head.

 

“Never, my lord.”

 

Eugenides eyes narrowed, but he accepted Costis’s outstretched hand and rose to his feet. “I would like to point out that everyone in this room has gotten kissed this morning _except_ for me. I want that fixed and then I want my breakfast and _then_ I want to tell the Baron Susa just what exactly he can do with his complaint against Baron Meinedes.”

 

“I see,” said Irene.

 

“Is that all?” Costis asked.

 

“For now,” Eugenides said, and smiled, and was kissed.

 

**Author's Note:**

> I am deeply grateful to Prinzenhasserin for the keen eyes and thoughtful critique over several drafts that made this story far better than it would have otherwise been. 
> 
> Thanks also to Jain! This story just poured out of me and I don't think it's one I ever would have considered telling without the inspiration of your prompt.
> 
> And many thanks to pendrecarc for moderating and shepherding this fantastic exchange!


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